Mr. Ciar?n Breen:

I do. I think it is over-generous. I made the point earlier about the idea that a bill of costs is drawn up and a fee is then added to that for drawing up the bill of costs, adding 10%, in some cases, which is a sizeable sum of money. It is those kinds of excesses that cause the kind of reaction people normally have to legal costs.

We do everything we can to keep them down. We can control our own legal costs very well. When we procure our panels of solicitors who advise us and our barristers, for example, we obviously do a good deal through that procurement process to keep our costs down. We have no control over what happens in the adjudication of costs system, however.